"Yeah, despite what people think, how interesting can pirates
really be? All they did was board ships, kill the people on-
board, and then steal the stuff. Yawn." A poster expressed this
sentiment on Usenet a few days ago. Following the release of
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL there has
been some discussion on the Usenet about the question whether
pirate stories are really all that exciting to make films from.
We are aware that the Western genre has fallen on hard times in
the popular media. Actually, there are other genres that really
have gone almost out of existence. Lost race fantasies, popular
a century ago, are almost gone. The only lost race film I have
seen in decades was Disney's ATLANTIS THE LOST EMPIRE. Similarly,
pirate stories seem to have lost cachet.

We in the United States are fascinated with other periods of
lawlessness from our history. In specific we are interested in
days of the turbulent West and the gangster-ridden 1930s, each
with its colorful wrongdoers. But we seem to not remember so well
the days of pirates on the high seas, preying on the Southeast of
what is now the United States. We think of them as sort of a
European phenomenon from the few stories we do see but no
continent was free of their ravages. And there was a time when
stories of the great buccaneers thrilled Americans as much as
stories of the great gunfighters.

Why is it the pirate story, as a genre, has lost popularity? We
will probably never know all the reasons why. But I think one
reason as far as cinema is concerned--let's limit the discussion
to cinema--is that a Western or a gangster film is a lot cheaper
to film than a pirate story. While a Western probably requires
horses and costumes, and a 1930s gangster film requires a lot of
set work to recapture the look of the period, a pirate film
requires the sets and the costumes and instead of horses it
requires ships. The genres of story that remain popular today are
those that have gotten visualized in films. Notice that "sci-fi"
got a lot more popular after the release of the first of the STAR
WARS films and its host of imitators. For the most part pirate
films have been comparatively few and have not lived up to the
excitement of the boys' pirate stories of the early parts of this
century.

If one looks at the classic pirate films going back to the Douglas
Fairbanks in THE BLACK PIRATE, they seem to mostly be a pretty
tame lot. The plots of films in the pirate genre frequently are
about some levelheaded, decent guy who becomes a pirate to avenge
a wrong. The classics are mostly pretty short on blood and
thunder with the exception of an occasional sea battle. THE SEA
HAWK is really about Sir Francis Drake. Even that is sanitized.
The title character of CAPTAIN BLOOD is really a good doctor who
has been enslaved unfairly and gets hold of a pirate ship. THE
CRIMSON PIRATE throws in a bunch of Jules Verne stuff, what today
some people call "steam punk." These are decent stories, but they
are not what we really think of as pirate tales. A lot of these
films were hobbled by the film codes of the time. The 1972
TREASURE ISLAND with Orson Welles is better than the other more
softened film versions, but even it is somewhat reserved. Welles
talked about the Stevenson story when he adapted it for radio. He
recognized that a pirate story should be at least in part a horror
tale. In 1972 he got to play Long John Silver and he may have
influenced John Hough to direct some of the film version that way.
Certainly there are obvious scenes that can be played for chills.
The pirates who besiege the Admiral Benbow Inn are a fairly
frightening lot. Sequences like Jim Hawkins hiding in the apple
barrel to avoid a sudden death and dodging the hand reaching in
for an apple could be played for real suspense.

But I cannot think of too many pirate films that go for the full
all-out horror story aspect. There actually is more of the blood-
and-thunder pirate story in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN than I
remember seeing in any other pirate film. Every once in a while a
current film does something right that the classics got wrong. I
really think what the readers of pirate stories were looking for
in films like CAPTAIN BLOOD they never really got until PIRATES OF
THE CARIBBEAN, in spite of the Disney connotations of the name.

But weren't characters of the classic films more like the real
pirates? Actually not. What we have seen in films in the classic
pirate films starring Tyrone Power and Errol Flynn and Douglas
Fairbanks really does not very accurately represent pirates and
does not use them to their real dramatic potential. They actually
were incredibly flamboyant and most of their leaders were real
sociopaths. They are every bit as interesting as 1930s gangsters
or samurai. They are people who respected no rule but their own
and lived outside any law. They got power by being really
ruthless and really scary. They happily tortured their victims.
One recommended book is Frank Sherry's REBELS AND RAIDERS. [-mrl]

A certain segment advocates homeopathic medicine, whereby the
active ingredients are diluted many times, the more dilute, the
more powerful the effect, one part in a million is "better" than
one part in 100,000 or so it is claimed.

So the inquiring mind should consider their response to
Placebocin as well, just to cover all bases.

Let's see diluting Placebocin from full strength, to one
part/million, or better yet I guess. one part/ten million or one
part/hundred million. Might take a while, but think of cures now
possible, with homeopathic versions of Placebocin and its
derivatives and generic copies!.

We don't even need to discuss the riches that would descend upon
the patent holders.

Enjoy, no charge for the idea. [-db]

[Note: Paul Chisholm points out that there are actually quite a
few side effects to placebos, unlike what I said in my article
last week. If interested you can start your search at
http://tinyurl.com/hwj4. [-mrl]]

CAPSULE: An interesting premise from a graphic novel makes about
half an hour of interesting story, mostly for the introduction of
the characters. But the film needed a good plot to make it more
than just a comic book origin story. This one seems to have a
plot that was patched together as it went along. The film has a
nice look, but the viewer is never intrigued by the villain or his
machinations. Rating: 4 (0 to 10), 0 (-4 to +4)

Perhaps one of the most respected names of authors in the graphic
novel medium is Alan Moore, creator or co-creator of WATCHMEN, V
FOR VENDETTA, FROM HELL, and THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY
GENTLEMEN. FROM HELL has already been filmed and now THE LEAGUE
OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN has been filmed also.

Moore's intriguing premise is that several characters, not
necessarily heroes, from popular late 19th Century British (or
French) fiction all exist in the same universe and can be called
upon by the British government to form a sort of Justice League of
Britain. Included in this all-star team are H. Rider Haggard's
Allan Quatermain, Jules Verne's Captain Nemo, H. G. Wells's
Invisible Man, Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll/Hyde, and Bram
Stoker's Mina Harker. The graphic novel turned them all into
superheroes, modifying several of them from their original form
intended by their creators. Nemo, decked out like a maharajah,
has a Nautilus the size of an ocean liner. (Side note: In 20,000
LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA Jules Verne originally planned that Nemo
would be a Polish engineer who had reason to hate Russians.
Verne's editor removed this detail so the novel would sell better
in Russia. In MYSTERIOUS ISLAND we find that Nemo is an Indian,
Prince Dakar.) Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde get crossed with the
Incredible Hulk. Hyde is a hulk-monster. In the book, Hyde is a
small man for whom even Jekyll's clothes are far too big. Not to
mention that many of these people died in their original stories.
The film takes even greater liberties. Along for the ride is
Dorian Gray who can pass all his injuries on to his portrait but
who dies if he sees the portrait. Mina Harker has become a
vampire like Dracula, but uses her new powers for good rather than
eeevil. Also joining the action is Tom Sawyer, now all grown up
and a secret service agent.

While the story would have been better had Moore and co-author
Kevin O'Neill restricted themselves to faithfully represent the
characters from the stories, it is still a fairly clever premise
to bring these characters together as a team. For that, if for no
other reason, I was looking forward to the film version of THE
LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN. Unfortunately, the film has to
introduce this premise and that task takes no little time on the
screen. It diverts time from telling the main story. With not
much time to tell the story, LEAGUE is not the most interesting or
engaging tale that it could be. It is a rushed story of a
super-villain with a confusing and confused but nasty plot that
endangers the whole world. The plot might be fit for a lesser
James Bond effort, but even there it could be better amplified,
better explained, and the character of the villain would be more
fleshed out. In fact, the villain of this piece has a particular
visual characteristic about him. He loses that characteristic
late in the film and when he does he also loses most of his
interest value. It becomes hard to pick him out of scenes. The
viewer hardly knows or cares. This is not a memorable screen
villain. Nor does it seem the writers started their script
knowing what the villain's plot was.

Part of the pleasure of the film is supposed to be the
anachronisms. But most of the fun is in the first part of the
film and the anachronisms long outlast the fun. Having a fancy
submarine in the 19th century is a good fun anachronism. Having
it be the length of the Queen Mary we can nod at. (Though it does
seem to change scale several times in the course of the film.) A
little while later when we see Nemo also has an automobile that
looks like a 1930s Hollywood roadster with fancy bric-a-brac
added, we must turn a blind eye. Later when we hear someone
making jokes about wanting to nail a woman, the anachronism is
just there to make a really stupid and tasteless joke and has no
humor value at all. It is the kind of joke that is a cue for the
patrons to check their watches.

The film's strong suit then is not its plot but its visual effect.
The production design is by Carol Spier, and she is very
accomplished. She has been art director or production designer
for several David Cronenberg films (including NAKED LUNCH and
"eXistenZ"), MIMIC, DRACULA 2000, and BLADE II. These are all
films with strong visual elements and it probably is no
coincidence. LEAGUE has a nice Victorian "steam punk" look and a
lot of nifty gadgets to look at.

It would be nice to see these literary characters brought together
in some intriguing yarn. This story is not it. And the villain
is just too much (dare I say it?) a comic book villain. I rate
THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and
a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]

Brian Aldiss has written a couple of autobiographies. One was
BURY MY HEART AT W. H. SMITH'S. Another, dealing more (from what
I know of BURY) with his earlier years, was THE TWINKLING OF AN
EYE. I found the latter in a used bookstore and tried it, but it
somehow failed to grab me the way other literary autobiographies
have. (It's possible a greater familiarity with all of Aldiss's
work might have made a difference.)

A more interesting literary biography was PAPA, the biography of
Samuel Clemens written by Susy Clemens when she was thirteen years
old. Her spelling is quite outrageous, but her descriptions of
Twain are pretty much spot-on.

Our library reading group read "The Aspern Papers", a novella by
Henry James about a literary biographer who goes to Venice to try
to recover some letters written by his idol. These letters are
now in the possession of an old woman and her niece, so he uses
his charm to try to obtain the papers from the niece. I won't say
whether he succeeds, but frankly, it was hard to care.

The book for our science fiction group was much better: A PRINCESS
OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Now I'm sure to many people the
notion that A PRINCESS OF MARS is a better book than a Henry James
novella is heresy. And there is a fair amount of cliche,
repetition, and stereotyping in PRINCESS. But at least it moves
along.

A couple of years ago, when The History Channel starting running
"The XY Factor", a series about sex throughout history (and
mythology and legend), I re-read Arthur C. Clarke's "I Remember
Babylon". In that, it is suggested that if the Chinese managed to
put up a communications satellite, they could undermine Western
civilization by broadcasting all sorts of shows then unavailable,
including such outrageous things as images of the sexually
explicit carvings on Indian temples and scenes of torture--all
supposedly as educational documentaries. Well, it was when "The
XY Factor" ran its show on sex in Asia and *did* show those
carvings that I re-read the story, and now I see that The History
Channel has a documentary on "punishment" through the ages.
Clarke was wrong about only one thing--it isn't the Chinese.
[-ecl]

Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Quote of the Week:
The nature of men and women--their essential
nature--is so vile and despicable that if you
were to portray a person as he really is, no
one would believe you.
--W. Somerset Maugham